Archives for September 2006

Cheryl tagged me for this meme, and since I still owe her the whole Novel Idea meme thingy that was going around a few weeks back, I figured I’d better take care of this one ASAP lest the Meme Police come after me.

Record usage of the letter combination “me” in the above paragraph, by the way.

1. If you make sweet tea, do you use Luzianne, Lipton or _______ whatever your brand is?

Luzianne – I find it to be a little milder than Lipton and oh-so-delicious.

2. What brand of toilet paper do you buy, and is it the larger rolls or regular?

Okay – in the official WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION department, I buy Cottonelle, 12 pack of double rolls. Why, you ask? Because there’s a yellow lab on the wrapper, and Alex thinks it’s one of our dogs.

3. Which brand of bath soap do you use? Is it body wash or bar style?

I believe I addressed my feelings about bar soap here. ALWAYS liquid. I use Softsoap Lavender and Chamomile. My favorite is Bath and Body Works Eucalyptus and Spearmint, and it’s my special treat soap.

4. Which cereal do you buy for yourself?

Smart Start or Frosted Mini Wheats

5. What brand of dishwasher detergent do you use and is it liquid or tablets?

Sunlight liquid. For some reason it works better on my dishes than anything else.

6. What is your favorite fruit to eat?

Strawberries if they’re in season. Ditto for blueberries.

7. Which brand of clothes detergent do you use?

Um, GAIN!

8. Do you like chocolate?

I’m sorry. Is there something NOT to like about chocolate?

9. Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Right.

10. Do you still write checks or use a debit card?

I’m a debit card queen. Well, really I’m a cash queen. More of a debit card princess, I guess. I write maybe four checks a year. Seriously.

Which brings me to an announcement.

If you are one of those people who is still using checks, PLEASE, for the love of all that’s holy, would you fill out as much of your check as you can before the cashier tells you your total? Because I’m telling you. People who leave their checkbooks IN THEIR PURSES until they get the total, then sort of leisurely dig around for it, pull it out, slowly flip to get to a check that’s blank, flip back to the register to check their balance, and then oh, they need their reading glasses, so they go back into the purse to search for those, and then FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER the transaction has mercifully come to a close?

That sort of gets on my nerves.

:-)

Consider yourself tagged if you want to do this one – and if you do, let me know in the comments so I can stop by and visit.

In the I-couldn’t-make-this-up-if-I-wanted-to-department, last night, in my dream, Antique Mommy and I foiled a terrorist plot.

Oh yeah we did.

I think we were successful because of our collective love for the short, choppy sentence combined with our deep and abiding affection for all things David Sedaris – who, I believe, would be simply delighted – albeit a bit disturbed – by his role as the unlikely catalyst for uniting a crime-fighting team.

And just so you know? AM and I stopped cars in the middle of a crowded road and FLIPPED THEM OVER.

Oh yeah we did.

So, dear readers, you can rest easy this Labor Day. Though dangers lurk in corners seen and unseen, Antique Mommy and I are ready and able to protect you and your family from evildoers.

And if our mad kah-RAH-tay skills don’t work, we can always go to plan B: Southern charm. With a little sarcasm thrown in for effect, of course.

By the way, if you’re wondering what convinced my subconscious that AM was the obvious other half to my dreamland terrorist-foiling duo, you need only look at this post.

The picture may not be her, but that’s a superhero cape if I ever saw one.

We’ve known for a couple of weeks that Labor Day ’06 was going to be chock-full-o-activity. We had plans to attend a party at my aunt’s, then hop over to Jackson for a surprise party for D.’s best friend. We thought we’d leave on Friday so that we wouldn’t be rushed, spend a leisurely weekend with all our people, and then come back this way Monday. It was going to be a thing of beauty, the weekend of the Labor.

But things didn’t go as we planned. I had a crazy week – and when Friday rolled around, I was nowhere near ready to leave town. Not by the longest shot. I called Mama and told her we’d be heading her way on Saturday.

Saturday morning I woke up Very Task Oriented because I think we all know that if you’re leaving town, your house must in fact be spotless so that All The Thieves can enjoy it while you’re gone. I got out the vacuum, ran it over the rugs in the kitchen, den, and dining room, then threw a load of clothes in the wash. I made up our bed, unloaded the dishwasher, and headed upstairs to get out a suitcase for the trip.

I don’t know what I did, exactly, or why a movement that I’ve made countless times in my life (the highly, deeply complex Reaching-Around-The-Door-For-A-Suitcase Move) suddenly went horribly wrong. But something in my neck / back / shoulder region caught, and all I could manage to say was, “OOOOOH? OOOOOOOH!”

I thought at first that it was a fluke, but when it became increasingly clear that my torso would in fact never be straight again, and that any attempts to straighten it would result in mind-numbing pain, I slowly made my way back down the stairs and proceeded to hobble into the bedroom, onto the bed – no, wait, that soft surface is wrong, all wrong – then back to the den, and slowly – slowly! – SLOW-LY! – made my way to the floor.

Alex, bless his heart, was just as confused as could be. He kept leaning waaaay down so he could look in my eyes and say, “Mama? You all right, Mama? You hurt your neck, Mama? Your back hurt?”

To which I replied, “Grrrmph. Grrrrrrmph. Hurt. Mama hurt. Yes. GRRRRRRRRRMPH.”

About that time D. came in the room to see what all the fuss was about (I’ll tell you what it was about! I’m OLD!), and he got me some Advil with a diet Coke chaser. He tried his best to work out the kinks in my neck and back with his mad impromptu masseur skillz, but then Alex wanted to help by running one of his toy cars up and down my spine.

And thus ended my brief and ineffective physical therapy session.

For the next thirty minutes we debated what to do. One thing I knew for sure – aside from the fact that I would never stand straight up again – was that I could not get in a car. Cars require sitting, and I could not, under any circumstances, sit. So the car was not an option. D. was concerned about leaving me at home, but I assured him that as long as I could get back and forth to the bathroom, even if it was slowly and awkwardly, I’d be fine. He asked me to show him that I could in fact get up off of the floor, and never one to back down from a challenge, I decided that I’d show him, oh yes I would. And GOOD.

So I gingerly rolled over on my stomach, took about four minutes to make the move to all fours, grabbed onto the side of the coffee table, and gradually pulled myself up to a semi-standing position while I attempted to blow my unkempt hair out of my face. And as I stood there in all my hunchback splendor, radiant in my t-shirt and decidedly unsassy pajama bottoms, just as lovely and put-together as the day D. married me (AHEM), he looked me over and said, “Yeah. So THAT makes me feel a LOT better about leaving you.”

Eventually, though, I convinced him that I’d be fine. I tenderly asked Alex if he’d be sad if I didn’t go with him, if he’d be okay going with just his daddy on the trip, and he answered me with, “OKAY! BYE BYE, MAMA! BYE BYE!”

Clearly, he was all broken up about it.

And as a result of all of those events, I have been by myself for the last two days. That doesn’t happen very often around here.

So after a couple of really hot baths, liberal doses of muscle rub stuff that stinks to high heaven, stretching exercises prescribed by my personal occupational therapist (okay, it’s Emma Kate, but she is licensed and all), a couple of magic pills that helped me sleep pain-free, and a hearty portion of blog reading (I read every single link. I did!), I’m all better now.

Sitting up and everything.

And not doing any more of that risky empty suitcase lifting anytime soon.

Oh no ma’am.

…seems all better now.

And I didn’t mean you had to comment on MY posts, sweet internets. Trust me – when it comes to commenters, I feel well-loved indeed. Whether you comment or not, I’m just glad that you’re here. :-)

I just meant you might want to comment on the OTHER posts that you visit as you make your way through Mr. Linky.

That was all.

Carry on. :-)

…with Site Meter. With my Site Meter, at least.

It’s telling me that I’ve had 22 vistors so far today, and since I’ve had more than that number comment since 7 this morning, and since that number is way less than the number Site Meter was giving me at 7 this morning, I think they’re having some technical difficulties.

All that to say: when you visit someone’s post (one that’s listed in Mr. Linky below), it would probably be nice to let them know that you’ve been there by leaving a comment. Looks like today is a day when SM won’t accurately tell the bloggy traffic tale.

And I am not in fact going out of town, but I’ll update you on that later (because I’m sure y’all are, you know, sitting on pins and needles as you wait to hear about my travel plans).

You may now resume your regular bloggity business. :-)

Have a great day, everybody!

We’re going out of town this weekend (ATTENTION, ALL AREA THIEVES!), and I will once again find myself at the mercy of my parents’ dial-up. I don’t know if y’all remember, but when we did the whole Tour of Homes thing I was also at my parents’ house and wrasslin’ with their dial-up, and boy, that was a real, um, treat when I tried to load all my high-resolution pictures into my post.

Ahem.

It was a veritable carnival-o-frustration.

So I know better than to try to post while I’m at Mama and Daddy’s. That’s all I’m sayin’.

But then, this morning, I had an idea.

WHAT IF, I thought, WHAT IF I gave people a way to attract some new readers to their blogs over the weekend – not just in the comments, but in one of my posts?

WHAT IF I did a “Best of Blogs” sort of thing – so that even if you don’t have time to post anything on this busy Labor Day weekend, you can still get some traffic because people are reading stuff that’s new to them?

WHAT IF, instead of a Tour of Homes, we have a spontaneous little Tour of Blogs?

So here’s the deal.

At the end of this post, you’ll see a Mr. Linky thingy. If you want to participate, enter your name and link to a SPECIFIC POST. Not to your whole blog – to a specific post. Pick the post that you think best exemplifies your writing – whether it’s funny or serious or touching or, you know, a grocery list.

The only qualification is that your post be family friendly, and by “family friendly” I mean no abundance of bad language, no links to inappropriate material, no writing that’s inflammatory or derogatory toward another person.

As my mama would say, “Just use the sense that the good Lord gave you.”

And I reserve the right to remove any link. If you don’t like that rule, I’m just as sorry as I can be.

Whether there are four or forty of you who participate, I think it’ll be fun. I love the thought of being able to surf through some new blogs instead of having to post to my own this weekend. And a practical benefit, of course, is that you can get a steady flow of bloggy traffic for little-to-no-effort. In other words: it’s a win/win.

Just for kicks, you could also link to someone else’s post that you think is a must-read – just make sure to leave a comment and take credit for leaving the link if you do.

Y’all have fun – and link away!